Huntsman's success was due not only to his practical
background and untiring experimentation, but also to the context
in which he lived. Born in 1704 into a Quaker family of Epworth
in Lincolnshire, Benjamin Huntsman is said to have shown an uncommon
aptitude for mechanical problems, apprenticed at the age of fourteen
to a local clock-maker.

Some time before 1725, Huntsman left the town of his birth to
set up business in nearby Doncaster where he quickly became successful
as a watch and clockmaker, even being trusted with the maintenance
of the town clock.

By 1739 he was renting a fairly substantial house in the High
Street, and bought the freehold two years later for £210.
His successful business as clockmaker probably allowed him the
time and resources to experiment on a small scale, and it is generally
believed that it was in Doncaster that he began his first tentative
experiments with steel.

What motivated Huntsman to develop an improved type of steel is
not known. The most popular theory states that he was dissatisfied
with the quality of steel then available for watch-springs which
were then usually made of German steel.

However, his descendants noted that "he had less to do with
watches than with clocks, smoke-jacks, roasting-jacks, and other
mechanical contrivances", and that his interest in steel
was more likely the result of scientific curiosity. He was known
in the neighbourhood as a competent medic and oculist, and for
his philanthropic use of these skills. In a letter to Huntsman,
Matthew Boulton -- proprietor of the Soho Works at Birmingham
and founder member of the Lunar Society -- paid tribute to the
inventor's "philosophick spirit". Huntsman's early correspondence
with Boulton, who later developed the rotary steam engine with
his partner James Watt, places him tantalisingly close to the
intellectual hub of the world's first industrial nation.